You’re going to a toddler’s birthday party. Tie = death by strangling.

You could throw on a t-shirt, but why do that if you can wear a great polo?

If you’d had to wear something this starchy and hot to do something athletic, you would’ve invented a garment, too.

Let’s start with things you didn’t know about polo shirts:

1. In the 20s, a famous tennis player was sick of the flannel pants and long sleeve shirts that composed “tennis whites.” He invented a garment out of pique cotton (waffley weave, for you non-french speakers).

His name? LaCoste. I’ll let you guess what animal his company stitched over the pocket.

2. The shirt, both lightweight and rugged, with a collar that could be flipped against the sun, caught the attention of Polo players. One South American polo club added an emblem of a rider on a horse. It was wildly popular.

Guess why we call it a polo shirt…?

3. Golfers, in the 50s, got their own version with a pocket over the right shirt for scorecard and tees, often with a a placket extending lower on the shirt than the older tennis shirt/polo shirt.

4. Ill fitting polo shirts have become industry standard uniform for retail and counter-clerks, a proliferation of baggy, flappy-sleeved polo-shirts have given this handsome garment a very bad racket. No pun intended.

Now, you’re a polo shirt maven, at least as far as history of the shirt is concerned. And if you look around, you’ll see that this shirt is everywhere, but generally, it’s worn poorly.

The white, blue and red accents will not make you look like Yankee Doodle. It will, however, lend your outfit a timeless, classic past-time look.

Let’s start with color

One of the things that makes a polo shirt (potentially) classy is that, well, it’s classy in the literal sense of the word. It hails from tennis and polo